


Inhibitions

by zenstrike



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Divergence or Transfiguration or whatever I’m doing here, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Garrison trio, Lovebug AU except it isn’t, Lovesick Klance and they’re dumb about it, M/M, Season 8, Secret Relationship, Serious Conversations About Consent, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22988740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenstrike/pseuds/zenstrike
Summary: Yeah.This might as well happen.***Lance, a bug bite, and a week of wrestling with Feelings and Shit.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 141
Kudos: 387





	1. Day 0

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boston](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boston/gifts).



> This is NOT a regular lovebug au lmao. I wanted to address issues of consent and explore commitment in wartime.
> 
> Look, this is just ridiculous. R-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s. It’s a silly and fundamentally romantic fic but it touches on a lot of things that vld canon kind of neglected. I also fist fight certain parts of canon. So please consider the following content warnings:
> 
> There are many moments of anxiety, outright fear, and implied PTSD in Team Voltron. They all support and love each other, but. Additionally, I address Lance’s death explicitly; the scary implications of Keith’s time in the Abyss; Pidge as something of a child soldier; potential guilt/shame in Shiro re: The Black Paladins; and Hunk as a tired rock/empathy magnet for the team. Allura and Coran, less explicitly, wrestle with some of the Implications of S8. I address a little bit of survivor’s guilt in both of them and address explicitly some of the perceived motivations for Allura’s canonical ending (recall: I fist fight canon). Lotor is present as a ghost for much of Allura’s characterization and development here, but as of my current draft he isn’t explicitly addressed except as a piece of Allura’s trauma.
> 
> The M rating takes all of this into consideration as well as: language; mature themes (though nothing explicit; if you’ve read my klance before u know what’s up); implied/referenced violence; and implied/referenced genocide.
> 
> Basically I take Season 8 and I make it whatever I want it to be, with a dash of sarcasm and hilarity. I try to stay true to what I remember of VLD’s tone. I hope you laugh once or twice.
> 
> My goal is to post a chapter every 2-4 days. Thumbs up emoji.

“It’s colloquially known as a lovebug,” Coran said, dropping a bomb like it was nothing at all.

Nothing. No thing, at all.

Zero percent of a thing.

Lance looked at Keith so fast something in his neck cracked, a little.

And Keith—that  _ bastard _ , that absolute  _ moron _ —perked up, rubbing idly at the bite just above the neck of his flight suit.

“Oh?” he said.

And Coran, unknowing and pure, waved a hand in dismissal. “The bite turns extraordinarily pink, for most species. And bumpy!”

“And bumpy,” Keith echoed

“But there are stories that the bite can cause uninhibited infatuation with the first being one sees!” Coran laughed, quick and loud. “Hence, lovebug!”

“Uninhibited infatuation,” Keith said. “You mean—”

“You’d fall in love with the first person you see.” Coran shook his head and packed up the dressing kit with a flourish of his hands. “Ridiculous, isn’t it! But amusing.”

Amusing, Lance thought.

“Yeah,” Keith deadpanned. “Hilarious. That would be Lance, then, wouldn’t it?”

The dressing kit clicked shut. Coran raised his head and looked back at Keith. Keith rubbed the bite some more, which just made the minty-medicinal smell of the ointment Coran had used seem stronger.

Lance swatted at his shoulder. “Don’t touch it.”

Keith scowled at him.

“Huh?” Coran said eventually.

“That I’d fall in love with,” Keith continued, rubbing some more at the bite that was obviously starting to itch. “That—uninhibited infatuation. It would be with Lance?”

“I suppose so.”

“That would be unfortunate.”

“I suppose so?”

Lance thought about stomping on Keith’s foot. Instead, he rolled his eyes and threw his hands in the air and strolled from the clearing (stormed from the clearing) and left Keith to his nonsense and Coran to his bad stories.

“Is everything alright?” Allura asked when he got back to their makeshift camp.

Lance kicked a rock. “Keith was bitten by a lovebug, says Coran.”

“A what?” said Pidge.

“A lovebug!”

“For real?”

“That’s what Coran said!”

Allura made a scoffing sound at the back of her throat and put her fists on her hips. “It’s just a story. Not to worry, Lance. Keith won’t be in love with you anytime soon.”

And she said it so seriously Lance believed her.

And Pidge started to laugh so hard Lance swore she threw up a little.

“Lance!” Pidge wheezed. “The bug would make Keith fall in love with  _ Lance _ ?”

Allura made another, louder, harsher scoffing sound. “The stories say that one falls in love with the first person they see after the bite.”

“And since Lance was the only one there—”

“Yeah,” Lance cut in, more snappy than he would normally like. “Yeah! I was the only one there! Big whoop! Get it all out now, gremlin!”

Pidge took in a breath, and then burst into a new round of laughter that had her clutching her sides. Allura sighed. Lance hunched his shoulders and scowled.

“It’s just a story,” Allura insisted.

“Teach you to go somewhere alone with Keith,” Pidge hooted. “Shiro and Hunk are not going to believe this.”

“It’s not real, Pidge!”

“What did you two find, anyways?” Allura said, turning her back on Pidge.

Pidge fell into another fit of giggles. Lance didn’t know what was so freaking funny but he was  _ sure glad _ that  _ someone _ was having a good time.

“Huh?” he said, glaring at Pidge.

“What were you and Keith doing?” Allura asked again, her impatience building.

“Oh,” Lance said, straightening and letting his voice slip to this side of casual. “Nothing.” He shrugged. “We thought we heard something.”

“Yeah,” Pidge huffed. “A lovebug!”

And Lance decided that  _ that _ was it and reached for her, and a chase ensued.

***

They had been—busy.

Yeah, busy.

Talking.

“I thought I was the emotionally stunted one,” Keith had said.

“Excuse me?” Lance had replied.

“I said,” Keith had continued. “I thought  _ I _ was the emotionally stunted one.”

“Yeah, I heard that.”

“Lance,” Keith had snapped, serious and Keith-like, and Lance had turned away and crossed his arms and looked up into the treetops above, at the dual suns sending light through the leaves and the branches, and he had waited with his heart in his throat for what he was sure was going to be a rough conversation, and then Keith had said: “What the  _ fuck _ —”

And when Lance had whirled back around Keith was rubbing at a slowly growing welt on his neck, and a pink and purple moth-like bug buzzed around their heads and flew away, and then Keith had blinked and pulled his fingers away from the bite, slightly bloody.

***

When they got back to the Atlas and finished the official debriefing, Shiro took his turn to laugh.

Loud and long.

He left the conference room with his flesh hand on his belly like he was some old merry whatever and even when the door was closed Lance could hear him laughing all the way down the hall.

This set Pidge off, who dropped her head to the table and squeezed her hair in her hands and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

“Really,” Allura murmured.

And Lance was inclined to agree.

“At least you’re not going to die,” Hunk said, patting Keith’s shoulder.

And Keith, very seriously, replied: “Thanks.”

“Could you imagine?” Pidge said, her face pressed to the table. “Lovesick Keith? God, I think I’d actually—just—”

“Don’t start laughing again,” Lance grumbled.

Keith scratched at the bite on his neck.

***

Uninhibited affection, huh.

***

Like, maybe, the way Lance had opened his eyes that morning and held his breath and pressed his fingertips to Keith’s chest just to feel the steadiness of his heartbeat? That soft  _ thrum thrum _ against skin and bone and resonating between them? Like, maybe, the way something had tightened and then unfurled in the pit of Lance’s stomach while he counted Keith’s breaths and the soft hitch of his snoring and remembered the sound of his voice? Like, maybe, the lingering feel and scent of Keith on his skin, that made Lance reluctant to shower and wash it all away? The overhanging absurdity of it all, and the way he had said, very quietly and quickly against Lance’s skin, “I love you”?

***

Their mission, such as it was, had been successful, despite the bumpy welt on Keith’s neck and despite the way Keith had brooded and loomed over the tittering blue-and-pink ambassador. Hunk had dragged him away and Keith had said “what did I do” and Allura, bless her, had worked her magic. She could talk anyone into doing anything, Lance was sure of it. All she had to do was smile and spread her hands and say some polite, diplomatic version of: “C’mon man.”

The Atlas landed. Shiro laughed at Keith and Pidge laughed at—everything, really, and Lance had suffered.

Yes, success.

Which meant taking a comfortable backseat while Allura and Shiro and Keith talked through a wobbly alliance with the blue-and-pinks, with their feathers and their twitchy five hands (“Five?” Hunk had said. “What?”) and their ceremonial hair floofs that could apparently be popped off at any given moment. Lance and Hunk and Pidge snuck away for dinner and more of Pidge’s laughter. Hunk, being the Wonderful Human that he was, pinched her.

“What!” Pidge said. “It’s hilarious!”

“It’s not,” Lance grumbled, gnawing on a piece of stolen, precious, rationed chocolate.

“Come on, Lance,” Pidge said, swinging her legs idly and waving in his direction. “It’s just a story.”

“Can we drop it, please!”

“Chocolate,” Hunk sighed, sliding to the floor of the mercifully empty kitchen (most of the crew seemed quite taken with their blue-and-pink visitors). “I  _ love _ chocolate. Like, love it.”

Pidge and Lance made happy noises of agreement.

“What would it even look like?” Pidge said, licking her fingers.

“Huh?”

“Lovesick Keith!”

“Ugh,” Lance groaned and joined Hunk on the floor. They frowned up at Pidge, comfortable on the counter, together.

“It’s not like he’s emotionless,” Pidge allowed. “It’s just usually he’s—?”

“Keith?” Hunk offered.

“Yes. Yes, exactly that.”

Lance shook his head and broke off a piece of his chocolate chunk, sliding it back into the foil and wrapping it gently. “Who knows.”

“Maybe Shiro does.”

“Don’t ask him,” Hunk warned. Pidge shrugged.

“There’s a witch wreaking havoc across the universe,” Lance said. “And we’re talking about a hypothetical Keith crush?”

“Not a crush,” Pidge corrected with glee. “Keith in  _ love _ .”

Yeah, Keith in love. Lance pressed at the crumbled edges of the foil and set the chocolate on the cool floor next to him. 

“I miss the castle,” Hunk sighed.

***

The Atlas’s artificial night cycle was starting when the three of them poked their head into what the MFEs had named “The Audience Chamber.” It was empty, finally, and they ducked back into the hall.

“Bedtime,” Hunk decided, rubbing his palms together.

“Thank fuck,” Pidge said.

“Amen,” Lance agreed.

And off they went.

When it was safe, Lance checked Keith’s room first: empty, dark, kind of chilly. He puttered to his own door but again: empty, dark, no Keith. He frowned.

Took a shower. Washed his face. Rubbed at his reflection in the mirror. Wondered what his mother was up to.

Keith was sitting on his bed when Lance reemerged.

“There you are!”

Keith tilted his head. He wiggled his toes. “Were you looking for me?”

“For a bit.” Lance shrugged. “Then I gave up.”

Keith smiled.

Lance turned away, scratching his warm cheeks and hummed to distract himself. “I brought you a treat.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a bribe,” Lance said, digging in his jacket pocket for the little foil wrapped chocolate chunk. He whirled back to Keith and held it out. “Don’t yell at me for ducking out of the meeting.”

“More like,” Keith said slowly, sliding off the bed and plucking the treat from Lance’s hand. “Don’t try and have a serious conversation?”

“Is that what we’re calling it.”

Keith shrugged. “Thanks for the chocolate.” He paused. “I still want to talk.”

Lance grimaced. “Give me back my chocolate.”

“No.”

Lance turned away again and dragged his fingers over the blue of his jacket, still crisp and new and looking fine, draped against the chair of the desk he hadn’t had a reason to use, yet. Their rooms on the Atlas felt huge and ridiculous, sometimes, even if they weren’t that different from the Castle. There were some cool things though, like: the private bathrooms, a luxury unavailable on the Castle; the comfortable beds and the broad desks, definitely not a luxury in the lions; the locks on the doors, reliable in their familiarity.

He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to seize the moments he could, taste the good things before the war demanded that from them, too. Was that so bad? Just to want to keep things safe and secret and warm? Was it selfish?

Maybe he wanted to be selfish.

“Lance,” Keith said, quiet and soft—secret and warm. Safe.

“Can we just go to bed?”

Usually, the exhaustion Lance couldn’t always hide was enough to make Keith say “Sure, Lance” or “Come here, sweetheart.” 

“Lance,” Keith said again instead, and Lance sighed and waved a hand and puttered his way to the bed without meeting Keith’s eyes.

“Goodnight!” he said, louder than he’d meant to, and squirmed under the blankets and tugged them over his head and tried to pretend they were anywhere but here.

Anywhere. 

He huffed against the mattress.

He felt Keith sit and heard Keith sigh, long and slow. He fought, briefly, when Keith tugged at the blankets and then relented and rolled onto his back to glare up at Keith.

“Lance.”

“Keith.”

The welt on Keith’s neck was definitely pink, now. Unnaturally pink. A little less bumpy. Lance could smell the ointment, again, like Keith had smashed some more onto the bite in an irritated, itchy frenzy.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, leaning up on his elbows and nodding towards the bite.

Keith shrugged. “It itches. A lot.”

“Don’t scratch it.”

“I’m trying!”

“Maybe you should put a bandage on it or something. A piece of tape.”

“Lance,” Keith said, and he was definitely annoyed now. Irritated.

Impatient.

Lance hunched. He curled his fingers against the bed. “What?” he grumbled.

“I want to touch you,” Keith said. Blurted.

“Well, I’m right here!”

“No, I mean—in front of everyone.”

“Oh boy.”

“Can you just listen?” Keith snapped.

“I heard you this morning,” Lance snapped back, his whole body tightening with the rise of his own irritation. “And I thought  _ you _ heard  _ me _ say  _ no _ .”

“Why?” Keith said. “Wouldn’t it be nice—just fucking stellar—if we didn’t have to get up at the ass-crack of space-dawn so one of us can scuttle away down the hall before— _ heaven forbid _ —someone noticed?”

“Don’t start ranting.”

“I’ve got something to rant about!”

“No, you don’t.” Lance fell back against the bed and scowled up at the ceiling and the low, warm lights. “Sure, Keith, it would be great! Let’s hold hands in the hall and cuddle at dinner—”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it.”

“—and give each other big kisses before we go out and you can say ‘Form Voltron! Also, I love you Lance’ and it would be just—dandy—just great.”

“It would,” Keith said, serious and Keith-like as he leaned into Lance’s view. “You know it would.”

“No,” Lance said. “It would be a thing. Like, a capital-T Thing. Pidge would laugh and Shiro would frown and Hunk would say ‘are you sure about this, Lance’ and Allura—man, we’d have to feel the full brunt of Allura-brand disappointment.”

“Lance—”

“They won’t understand, Keith, and it’ll—ruin everything.”

Something twitchy and unfamiliar flickered over Keith’s expression then, hanging around his eyes and the corner of his mouth and drifting along his cheeks and his scar. Lance didn’t recognize it, and he didn’t like it.

Not at all.

He wanted to take back his words and drag Keith to him and promise to give Keith whatever he wanted, whatever he asked.

He looked away.

“It’s not me?” Keith said after a moment.

“Huh?”

And then there were Keith’s fingers at his cheek, feather-light and warm and drawing Lance back; and there was Keith’s expression, still and focused and open behind its walls. Keith was leaning over him properly now, twisted so his shoulders were at an angle, so his head tilted and his hair fell around his face and neck and against his forehead.

( _ I want to touch you _ , Keith had said and Lance knew what that felt like. It took all his focus, sometimes, not to reach out for Keith, to brush his fingers through Keith’s hair or feel his pulse beating away in his wrists, or just to lean close and  _ be close _ — Lance knew what he meant and what he wanted. He thought he knew how it would feel to be casual and open and sweet together, the boldface of their affection, but he also thought he knew how it would feel to be exposed.

They could be safe, together. Just like this.)

“You’re not unsure about—me?” Keith continued eventually, speaking slowly like he was unraveling his words and their meaning bit by bit and as he went. He grimaced. “About us, I mean. ...leading question, I guess.”

“I’m sure,” Lance said in a rush. “I’m so sure.”

“Good.”

“Come to bed,” Lance mumbled and shuffled over. “Let’s just go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to hide forever, Lance.”

“We might not have forever.” Lance rolled onto his side, the blankets bunching around him, and blinked up at Keith. And again: “Come to bed.”

A moment, and then Keith sighed and nodded and puttered around Lance’s room in his pre-sleep ritual. He checked their alarm, and the lock on the door, and turned off the lights, and Lance waited, counting Keith’s steps. He looked so huge in the room, made it seem small, that Lance thought it would be impossible to look anywhere else.

In the dark, he listened for Keith’s breaths and felt the bed shift as he clambered up and close. It was a slow, easy, and familiar dance to accommodate each other: to shift and let the other fill your spaces. In the dark, Lance reached out and felt Keith’s heart beat under his palm and felt Keith’s breaths against his lips and felt that natural pull towards each other that dragged them close again and again.

It was safe, in the dark. He could whisper Keith’s name, into the dark, and he could enjoy the warmth of Keith’s mouth on his neck and the feel of Keith’s shoulders under his hands and he could say, with confidence and with Keith in his arms, “I love you.”

***

“Stop scratching at it.”

“It’s just so fucking itchy—”

“Teach you to go around aggravating alien bugs.”

“Ha ha. Hilarious.”

“Stop scratching.”

***

Lance had an embarrassing dream that night.

Very embarrassing. Too embarrassing to think about. To speak of. To remember.

If it had been a sex dream, that would have been alright. He’d wake up confused but pleased and he’d poke Keith awake and tell him about it and Keith would say something like “we could probably do that” and then they would. Something like that.

If it had been a nightmare, like the kind of foolish but scary nightmare where he’d wake up suddenly certain that Voltron had a dick and one of them needed to find giant space condoms for it, he’d wake up confused and a little pissed off. He’d poke Keith awake and tell him about and Keith would say something like “yikes” and Lance would immediately feel better. Something like that.

Or if it had been one of the more normal nightmares, the regular nightmares, the familiar visitor who liked to show up and ruin a perfectly good sleep so Lance would wake up sweaty and too-aware of the vast emptiness of space with the swooping fear of falling into nothing in his belly— Keith usually woke him up from those, like Lance woke Keith from his, and the first step would always be to wrestle with the shame and the irritated anxiety—

But Lance dreamt about summer. He dreamt about sunlight and water and laughter. He dreamt about him and Keith dressed in red and standing ankle-deep in a starlit ocean with the sun beating down on them and love overflowing between them. And in the dream Lance said: “I want to marry you.” And in the dream Keith replied: “Good.”

He woke with a start and a flush to his cheeks.

Keith woke too, halfway, and pulled Lance closer and nosed against Lance’s shoulder and said: “You’re okay.”

Lance caught his breath. He slapped his hand to Keith’s, pressed against his chest, and held on tight.

“You’re okay,” Keith said again. “It’s not real.”

Yeah. Too embarrassing to think about.

***

Keith got up first. The alarm went off and one of them swore and Lance rolled into Keith and tried to wrap all of his limbs around him. Keith peppered his face with sleepy kisses and Lance mumbled “I love you” and Keith replied “I love you too” and one of them said “see you later.”

And then Lance was alone, sprawled on his belly on the bed and pressing his face against the warm spot where Keith had been.

He got up eventually, with a huff and a groan and the mounting ache that came with missing Keith in the morning. He stretched and he pressed his fingers to what he could reach of the knotted scar on his back, huge—“like wings,” Keith had said once and Lance had rolled his eyes to hide his pleasure—huge and familiar, now. He scooped his abandoned sleep clothes from the floor and ignored the newer scars on his hip, at his shoulder, below his collarbone and on his left thigh, and he ignored the older scars on his knees, and he got ready for the day.

The pillows smelled a little like the ointment Keith was using way too much of. Lance was sure Keith had already scratched himself a new scar. Lance carried on in his normal.

***

Keith had eaten his chocolate and folded the foil into a lopsided heart. Lance pocketed that.

***

Hunk handed him a cup of coffee—real, honest coffee; the only thing Shiro had really demanded—when Lance joined the others in the kitchen. It was one of their alone-times, just the seven of them: breakfast, and coffee, and decompressing as a team (nightmares spread). Allura rubbed his back when Lance sat next to her and Pidge asked if he’d seen Keith or Coran yet.

“Nope,” Lance mumbled into his coffee. “Maybe they’re busy.”

“Busy with  _ what _ ?”

“Oh, you know. War.”

Pidge rolled her eyes and munched at her breakfast. She looked tired and slumped and was crowding close to Shiro, blinking up at him every chance that she could and relaxing only when he looked back down at her and smiled.

(Keith said Shiro felt bad, sometimes; felt absent, like he couldn’t be Pidge’s security blanket anymore; felt extraneous and unwanted, like they were all holding—stuff against him.

Shiro didn’t tell Lance this. Shiro told Keith and Keith told Lance and Lance kept his mouth shut.)

“Sleep okay?” Lance asked.

“Yup,” Pidge lied.

And he let her.

Coran and Keith came after that, talking quietly with the usual hand-waving and moustache-twitching and mullet-bouncing. Lance looked up long enough to smile at them, and to see Keith’s smile blossom in response, and then he turned away and pressed his fingers to his coffee cup and relished the feeling of missing Keith just a little less.

“Good morning,” Hunk said. “Breakfast?”

“Probably,” Keith said, coming up behind them and making Lance’s skin tingle. He’d breathe again when Keith was gone.

“Ugh,” Pidge said, straightening. “Your  _ neck _ , Keith.”

“You shouldn’t scratch that,” Allura said.

“Probably,” Keith said again, close and steady and Lance could lean back and look up at him, give him a grin and a smile that no one would think anything of. He could study Keith’s chin and listen to his voice and pocket his smile and contemplate his shoulders for the rest of the day—

And then Keith leaned in and wound his arms tight and warm around Lance and nosed behind his ear and said: “Good morning, sweetheart.”

Lance froze.

Keith kissed his cheek and stole his coffee and pulled away.

“Uh,” Hunk said.

Lance, gaping and choking, looked at Hunk and then Allura. Allura leaned back in her seat with her arms folded and her lips curled into a frown.

And Keith sipped at Lance’s coffee and began his usual hunt for cheese.

“Uh,” Coran echoed. “Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

“Yup.”

Lance tried laughing. It didn’t last. He clapped his hands over his mouth and held in a shriek.

“Oh shit,” Pidge said with feeling.

“Keith,” tried Shiro next. He paused. And then: “What the hell?”

“Huh?” Keith said, frowning and looking up from his search and  _ still drinking Lance’s coffee _ .

“I mean,” Shiro continued. “What the  _ hell _ ?”

“Lovebug,” Hunk muttered.

Lance elbowed him.

“What!” Hunk glanced around the table, spreading his hands. “Someone ask him.”

“Don’t,” Lance pleaded.

Keith settled for bread and crammed it in his mouth in a very normal Keith fashion and studied all of them. And maybe the others couldn’t see the little satisfied twitch of his lips or the too-big blinks of his eyes but  _ Lance sure as fuck could _ and Keith was in deep shit.

_ Deep _ shit.

Lance tried to communicate this telepathically. Keith ignored him.

Allura frowned at Lance some more, and then nodded once and whirled around in her seat to look at Keith. Keith raised his eyebrows.

“Oh my god,” Lance said.

“Allura,” Shiro started.

“Keith,” she said. Keith swallowed his bread. “How do you feel about Lance today?”

“Oh my god,” Lance said again.

“I would’ve been more direct, I think,” Hunk muttered.

“Don’t ask leading questions,” Pidge said, waving a hand at him.

“ _ Well _ —”

“The same as usual,” Keith replied with a shrug. He waved his bread and pilfered coffee once and carried on in an act that melted Lance’s spine: “He’s the love of my life.”

Son of a bitch, Lance thought and watched Allura twitch.

“Oh?” she said, not-at-all-casually.

Keith nodded and looked thoughtful for a moment and then added: “I’m going to marry him one day.”

Lance gaped.

Keith returned to munching at his bread.

Shiro, across the table from Lance, opened his mouth and then closed it. He shook his head. He raised a finger and then slapped his hand to the table.

“Uh,” said Hunk.

“Infirmary,” Shiro said and peeled his hand from the table and waved in Keith’s general direction. “Keith, you—yeah. Infirmary.”

“Well,” Coran piped up. “It won’t last forever.”

“ _ Infirmary _ .”

“I feel fine,” Keith said.

Lance put his head down and counted his breaths all the way to forty.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Lance come to an understanding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "chapters every 2-4 days" i said, like a fool. 
> 
> hello everyone, here is chapter two. idk when chapter three will be up because working in a pandemic is wild.
> 
> but.
> 
> A WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER: as I said last time, one of the major things i'm concerned with in this au are issues of consent, particularly around something like a lovebug au, even though keith isn't actually bitten by a lovebug. to that end and towards the end of the chapter, lance makes a bad joke about molestation. he recognizes it's bad, and he and keith both know it's coming from a place of anxiety and discomfort, and also from something of a frustrated mean place. it precedes an open conversation about what they're doing. all the same, the "joke" is there.

Keith came back from a hole in the universe with revelations and his social awkwardness bumped up to a thousand degrees. Or whatever.

He came back weird.

Everything happened so fast.

Before, there had been something unstable, something jittery between them, that had made Lance miss Keith terribly and made him feel unknown and isolated on the Castle Ship. He turned his head, sometimes, to make a wry comment or a bad joke and he’d find nothing and no one next to him. Just the blank space where Keith had been, and where he was supposed to be. He didn’t know he was aching for Keith until Keith was back, and distant, and changed.

They’d lost that  _ something _ in the two years that had been months for Lance; in the cataclysm that was their final, terrible fight with Lotor; in the grief that was waiting for Shiro to wake up.

Lance realized he wasn’t a kid anymore while he watched Keith watch over Shiro. 

“He won’t look at me,” he said to Hunk.

And Hunk, tired and more beaten than Lance wanted to recognize, replied: “He won’t look at any of us, Lance.”

Yeah.

Everything happened so fast.

***

Keith brought his bread and coffee with him and let Shiro and Allura usher him down the hall and around several corners. The rest of them trailed along, Lance dragging his feet and tugging desperately at his cheeks.

“It’ll be okay,” Hunk said three times, rubbing Lance’s back.

“Uh huh.”

“Establish boundaries,” Pidge insisted at Lance’s elbow, slapping her hands together for emphasis. “Tell him ‘no’!”

“Since when does Keith listen to me!”

“He listens to you all the time!”

Ha! Yeah right.

Lance scowled at the back of Keith’s head. He thought he could hear Keith’s smile from here.

“Nothing doing,” Coran sniffed from behind Lance. “There’s no cure for a curse!”

“A curse,” Lance echoed.

“Not to worry! It’ll pass.” Coran paused. “A few days, at most.”

“A few days,” Pidge grumbled. “A few days! A few days of Keith saying stuff like—like—”

“Like he’s going to marry Lance?” Hunk offered.

“Gross,” Pidge said thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Lance sighed, giving up on his warm cheeks and shoving his hands in his jacket pockets. “Gross.”

He’d been so peaceful. So—happy, almost. Comfortable, for sure! And now this.

And  _ now _ —this!

At the infirmary, with the seven of them crowded around her while Keith licked crumbs from his fingers, Dr. Wilson looked up at each of them and frowned from under her uneven bangs. 

“He what?” she said.

“He was bitten by a lovebug,” Allura said, insistent and impatient. “He’s feverish and he’s acting strangely.”

“Cursed,” Coran piped up. “He’s acting cursed.”

“Cursed,” Dr. Wilson echoed.

“I’m fine,” Keith said, squinting at the bottom of (Lance’s!) empty cup.

“Of course you are,” Allura said over her shoulder.

“He kissed Lance,” Pidge said, coming up next to Allura and peering around her arm.

Dr. Wilson blinked. She tugged at her hair. “Is that strange?” she said after a moment.

“Yes!”

“I’m fine,” Keith said again.

Dr. Wilson turned to him. Her expression shifted, or maybe that was Lance hallucinating and maybe he was about to have a terrible migraine. “Hello Keith,” she said and continued without pause. “Is it strange that you kissed Lance?”

“No,” Keith replied with a shrug. “I do it all the time.”

Lance wanted to eat his own teeth.

Pidge flailed uselessly.

“He’s sick,” Shiro piped up, nudging Keith a little closer to Dr. Wilson. She was still sitting. “You should look at the welt on his neck.”

“It itches,” Keith admitted.

“I have an ointment,” Dr. Wilson offered.

“Thank you, but I have some already.”

Shiro looked pained.

“Fine,” Dr. Wilson sighed and finally stood from her little stool. It seemed to take all of her energy just to wobble her way to upright. She aged herself by thirty (or forty) years when she raised both hands and beckoned for Keith to come closer. “Let me look at it.”

Keith shrugged again but obliged, still holding the pilfered mug of no-coffee in a loose hold. Hunk was compulsively scratching his neck, grimacing on and off. He slapped his hand to his side when he spotted Lance watching him.

“It’s bumpy,” Dr. Wilson said, sounding surprised. Awed. A little more awake than she had been moments before.

“A little,” Keith agreed.

“And extremely pink.”

Keith nodded. He leaned away from her probing fingers. Another shrug, like the “curse” had broken all his senses and turned him into some hulking shrugging monstrosity of a man. Lance summoned all the will he carried in his worn and stressed body and tried to glare daggers at the back of Keith’s stupid mulleted head (though was it really a mullet anymore? wasn’t it long enough, now, that it was just—hair? just handsome and dark and soft and strangely elegant, splayed over the pillowcase while Keith slept—)

Lance pinched himself.

“Ow,” he said.

Keith looked at him. Hunk looked at him.

“Nope,” Pidge said, shifting from foot to foot. “You’re awake.”

Lance looked at the ceiling to avoid Keith and Hunk and their—faces.

Dr. Wilson dropped back onto her stool and crossed her arms. “I could run some tests?” She sounded almost hopeful. Like they had interrupted the bored reverie of her time on the Atlas.

“I feel fine,” Keith insisted, again. He shuffled back, or tried to: Shiro caught him with his flesh hand between Keith’s shoulders, holding him in place.

“That would be great,” Shiro said.

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” Dr. Wilson mumbled. She shrugged. Her lips twitched. “But I’m happy to look.”

Coran bounded forward, making the bracketed space of their corner of the infirmary seem infinitely smaller in his exuberance. He was so. Orange. Sometimes.

“Together, I’m sure, we can get to the bottom of this!” Coran clapped a hand to Keith’s shoulder. “Keith, my boy, would you mind terribly if I recorded your cursed-ness?” Coran paused. “For science? And history, of course.”

“Of course,” Dr. Wilson echoed, blinking up at him. She tugged, again, at her hair and then scratched idly at the back of her neck.

Of course, Lance thought.

“I don’t mind,” Keith said. He gestured to his neck. “It’s just a bite, though.”

“It’s a curse, Keith,” Hunk piped up, wringing his hands like some comical, cartoonish version of himself.

“Or an illness,” Pidge suggested.

Coran clapped his hands together, startling both. “Either way, a mystery to be enjoyed!”

“Yes,” Allura sighed. “We’re all enjoying this.”

“Really. I feel fine,” Keith said, peering inside Lance’s mug again. He scratched at the welt on his neck. Shiro prodded him, sharp and quick, in the ribs. 

Lance, desperate, snatched his emptied mug from Keith. “That was  _ mine _ ,” he finally said. Maybe moaned.

Keith smiled at him. “Sorry.”

“I’m going to actually vomit,” Pidge said. “I am actually vomiting right now. In my soul.”

“Gross,” Hunk said.

“Check his temperature,” Allura cut in, frustration bleeding loudly into her voice. “If it’s an infection—”

“I  _ feel fine _ .”

“He says he feels fine,” Dr. Wilson said. She shuffled back on her stool until her back hit the stunted desk the Garrison had equipped her with. “I’ll run tests—”

“With my guidance,” Coran chirped.

Dr. Wilson considered him. “Assistance,” she corrected. Coran let her. “And with Keith’s cooperation.”

“Sure,” Keith said.

Shiro jabbed Keith in the side again, as if for good measure. Lance understood the urge. “Just fix him, please.”

“If you’re that concerned,” Dr. Wilson sighed. “Just keep them away from each other.”

Keith twitched a full-body, halfway-violent twitch, like he was about to leap across the room or tackle someone to the floor. 

Lance tugged at his collar.

“We’ll figure it out,” Shiro said after a moment.

“Figure  _ what _ out,” Keith snapped. “I’m not—”

“You’re cursed,” Allura said, the sharp edge of her voice startling him into silence. “Or you’re ill. I understand that you don’t hear that, at the moment, but you will, and you  _ will _ be grateful we’re keeping you from doing something—” She broke off.

“Dumb?” Lance offered weakly.

“So, so dumb,” Pidge said.

“Dumb,” Allura agreed.

Dr. Wilson heaved a huge sigh, drawing attention back to her. “Just grab a chair, please,” she said. “I’m going to draw some blood.”

“Excellent,” Coran crowed.

Keith turned to him with a grimace.

Dr. Wilson waved her hands in a vague gesture. “The rest of you can leave.”

“Maybe I should stay,” Shiro started.

“With all due respect, Captain,” the good doctor replied. “You should go panic somewhere else.”

Keith watched them all go from his new spot, perched on another one of the uncomfortably small stools. He looked enormous, crunched onto it, like at any moment his knees would meet his chest and his new shrugging habit would become an uncoordinated hunch. The bright pink of the lovebug’s bite winked from his neck as Lance finally turned away, clutching the emptied mug for dear life.

The remaining five of them collected loosely outside the infirmary door.

“Well,” Allura started. Nothing else followed.

Lance choked out a laugh, and then choked it back down.

***

They had long nights in space. And short ones. That had always been true, but there was something sharper and colder and more lonely about sleeping in Red’s belly, with the whisper’s of her consciousness in his ears and a creeping sense of Keith’s absence in her wafting over Lance’s shoulders at inopportune times.

Lance would lay on his back and stare up at his Lion’s soft, red light, and feel her only somewhat gentle pulsing against what he could only describe as his soul (so different from Blue, who he knew like he knew nothing else, who he knew was nestled close against Allura’s heart now)—

Lance would lay on his back and stare up at his Lion’s soft, red light, and he would think about the way Keith couldn’t look at him—or if Keith did look at him, he stared for too long, or barely seemed to see him at all. Hints of what Keith had experienced in the Abyss hovered like a mist over all of them and seeped into the connections between the Lions. But it was loudest, for Lance, in this tenuous nothing between them.

He would lay on his back and stare up at his Lion’s soft, red light, and he would imagine catching Keith by the elbow and dragging him aside, or closer, and scowling down at him—but Keith was taller now, broader; different and the same; Keith and not; remembered and a stranger—scowling at him until Keith finally bit back.

He would imagine slapping Keith’s back playfully, nudging their elbows together, and teasing that it was both nice and painful to be Keith’s right hand again, and he imagined that Keith would smile wryly and roll his eyes and shift awkwardly out of reach, and say something like, “Good thing I’m ambidextrous,” and Lance would reply with something like, “You’re such an ass,” and he would, maybe, be unable to keep the affection from soaking into his voice like some overused and overworn sponge.

He would imagine just standing side by side, like they did in that perfect pocket of Something before they found Shiro, or Shiro’s clone, and before Keith had felt the need to run away and leave Lance.

He would imagine, and hate himself for imagining it, telling Keith that he missed him—really, honestly, continued to miss him—and he would fall into restless dreams of Keith replying: “I missed you, too.”

They had long nights in space. And short ones.

***

“Do we keep alcohol anywhere,” Pidge mumbled, rifling mindlessly through the cupboards back in the kitchen.

“Pidge,” Shiro admonished.

“If you find any,” Hunk said. “Save it for the wedding we’re apparently going to plan.”

“Dude,” Lance said, pained.

“Sorry.”

Hunk gnawed at his lip for a moment. His hands twitched like he wanted to start scratching at his neck again. Very Keith-like. Or Keith was being very Hunk-like.

Lance slumped over the counter, his legs hanging uncomfortable and his elbows dragging. He pressed his fists against his cheeks and groaned.

“You could have a summer-space wedding,” Hunk blurted. “A space-summer wedding.”

“Who plans a wedding during a war,” Shiro sighed, and then seemed to catch himself. He straightened and looked at Lance, like  _ Lance _ was responsible for all this madness. “Nobody. Nobody plans a wedding during a war.”

“Wartime is a great wedding season,” Pidge said, scrambling and hopping her way back to the floor. “Lance can be a war bride.”

“Keith would look great in white,” Hunk mused.

“Please stop,” Lance moaned.

“We’d better,” Pidge agreed. “Shiro looks ready to collapse.”

Allura paused in her pacing behind Lance and came up next to him, slapping her hands to the countertop.

Lance blinked up at her. He hunched a little further over the counter.

“Dr. Wilson’s suggestion is a good one,” Allura said, nodding her head once for emphasis. “We just need to keep them away from each other.”

Pidge snorted. “More like keep Keith away from Lance. Lance looks ready to collapse, too.”

“Please don’t,” Hunk said, turning fitfully to Lance.

“Stop talking about my wedding, then!” Lance huffed and dug his fists a little harder against his cheeks, letting his eyes slip closed. He saw Keith’s little smile against his eyelids, bright and sunshine-y and usually the thing that carried him through the day.

And now—

Well, Lance thought and groaned again. This might as well happen. This might as well— _ happen _ .

Fucking Keith. Lance was going to yell when he saw him.

Maybe not yell.

But he was going to be mad. So mad.

So.

Something.

He opened his eyes and found Allura on the other side of the counter now, staring intently at him. He straightened instinctually. “What?” he said. “This isn’t my fault.”

“It kind of is,” Pidge said. “You wandered away with Keith.”

“It’s nobody’s fault,” Shiro said.

“It’s the bug’s fault,” Hunk corrected, waving a nervous finger in Shiro’s direction.

Allura frowned. She pressed her hands harder against the counter surface and leaned over her elbows, staring more intently. “Lance,” she finally said. “Everything will be alright.”

Lance blinked. “Oh,” he said. And then, catching up slowly: “Yeah.”

Yeah, he thought and looked around the room at his friend’s slightly sweaty and very tired faces. Everything really would be alright. He knew this, deep in his gut, but that knowledge stirred next to a heavy bundle of guilt.

Oh, he thought. Yeah. Guilt.

He wiped his palms against his thighs and peered at the edge of the counter, watching the metal surface press against the air above his legs like it was a fascinating edge. A stumble, just waiting for a fall into an abyss.

“I mean it,” Allura said, spying something on Lance’s face. 

Maybe he was breaking out.

“Keith’s not insane,” Shiro sighed. He rolled his left shoulder, and then his right. “Whether or not he thinks he’s in love with Lance—”

“He wants to get married,” Pidge said, voice thick with something that was unmistakably disgust. “He wants to  _ marry _ Lance. He said that. Right here in this kitchen. Like an announcement.”

Like an announcement, Lance thought. He felt a stabbing in his gut. The heavy bundle of guilt grew spines and a tail.

“Someday,” Hunk added weakly. “He said  _ someday _ .”

Someday, Lance thought.

“It will pass,” Allura cut in and straightened, peeling her hands from the counter and crossing her arms. “The curse isn’t meant to last forever. We’ll double check with Coran when he’s done with Keith, and then we’ll keep Keith and Lance a reasonable distance apart until the infatuation passes.”

Passes, Lance thought.

It would be easy, really, to just tell the truth. Casually drop it into the room like a stink bomb. Let the smell of his honesty and Keith’s asshole-ry waft into everyone’s brain until they were staring for real reasons instead of panic-stricken, “oh-no-something-bit-Keith” reasons. 

But if he didn’t, if he stayed quiet and guilty and uncomfortable, he would be able to keep their special pocket of heaven safe for a little longer, and have his embarrassing wedding dreams in relative peace, and endure everyone’s best efforts to keep them apart.

Apart, he thought and felt his brain stutter and stop before it began to melt.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” he muttered.

Allura frowned. “Please don’t.”

“Coran is getting ready to write a whole book,” Hunk said. “How much curse time equals a full book?”

“In Coran speak?” Pidge scoffed. “Like, a day.”

“Coran’s a great writer,” Lance said. “Keep your criticisms in your head, goblin.”

Pidge flipped him the bird, and Lance felt almost normal.

“Can we stop calling it a curse?” Shiro said.

Allura nodded again. “Shiro is right,” she said. “Let us call it what it is: Keith is ill. Unwell.”

“Lovesick,” Hunk choked.

Allura opened her mouth. Closed it. And then shook her head.

“Let me tell you,” Shiro said, scrubbing his prosthetic hand over his face with a muted grunt. “I am  _ regretting _ laughing.”

And Pidge, with weight, agreed: “Boy howdy.”

“I need a nap,” Lance mumbled.

“I’m going to keep an eye on Keith,” Shiro sighed.

They parted ways in the hall.

***

How did it happen, then.

Maybe there’s a life where they dance around each other forever, pining and useless like some sad movie where the leads never realize that yes, he loves me and I love him.

Maybe there’s a life where Lance gives up and loves someone else, or never even acknowledges that the thing stirring against his ribs  _ is _ love.

Maybe there’s a life where this was never an issue, and where Keith came back from the Abyss already ready to fall into Lance’s arms and already practiced at whispering love into Lance’s blood.

In this life, there was rain. There was an averted apocalypse and weeks spent healing in the desert. Keith’s voice in Lance’s ears and Pidge’s exhausted slump against Allura’s side when they—the team, the family that they were, summed up by a giant robot’s name—gathered together and leisurely compared wounds.

Rain.

“Lance.”

Keith’s voice in the night. The stark white of his exhausted face and the harsh almost-red of his scar, the peek of its continuation under the collar of his loose shirt.

“Keith?”

Hospital noises that were not noises. Wondering, and then saying,  _ am I dreaming _ ?

And that small Keith smile as he pulled his hand away and straightened as best he could, as well as his aching head would let him. “Come with me.”

And Lance, unquestioning and unafraid, replied: “Sure.”

Rain from a clear, dark sky.

***

Lance went to his room and sat on the edge of his bed and leaned back on his hands and stared at the closed door. He listened to the quiet hum of the Atlas around him. He kicked off his shoes and toed off his socks and pressed his bare toes against the cool floor. If the Atlas was as alive as Shiro seemed to think it was...well, it was probably cold-blooded. Lance wiggled his toes and then pressed his feet more firmly against the floor, bracing himself against the bed with his hands. If the Atlas was cold-blooded like a—like a space lizard—then it probably ate space bugs. Space flies. Space rats. Shiro probably kept them in a giant space freezer. Or was space the freezer?

He got to his feet and shook his head so the shaggy mess that was his hair flopped about his forehead. The cold sent something of a shock up his shins and along his calves, but he shook that off, too, and strode beyond his discarded shoes and socks.

The hall was abuzz with the sound of Hunk’s fretting.

“I’m not fretting,” Hunk said, frowning.

“I didn’t say anything.” Lance paused. He rocked on his bare feet. “Do you think the Atlas eats space rats?”

“There are  _ space rats _ ?”

“Nothing’s impossible.”

“Dude,” Hunk said, his expression pained and his voice dragging. “You’re killing me.”

Lance shrugged and ambled his way closer to swat Hunk’s hands away from their fretting position at his chest. Hunk swatted back.

The fight was brief.

“How was your nap?” Hunk grumbled. “Short, I guess.”

“Didn’t nap,” Lance replied. “I thought about what the Atlas eats.”

“Pretty sure it eats Shiro’s cosmic energy or something.”

“Shiro has cosmic energy?”

Hunk leveled Lance with a steady stare. “Nothing’s impossible.”

Lance rolled his eyes. He crossed his arms and glanced down at his feet and considered his toes. Then, looking back up, he tried again: “Seriously, though. If the Atlas is alive, it’s a lizard. And lizards eat rats. Ergo—”

“Ergo  _ nothing _ .”

“We should ask Shiro.”

“About non-existent space lizards?”

“Which  _ have _ to eat space rats.”

“Not all lizards eat rats! I bet there are rats out there in the universe that eat lizards.”

Lance recoiled. “What?” 

They grimaced at each other and then looked away.

“What a day,” Lance sighed, uncrossing his arms and letting his hands hang uncomfortably at his sides.

“It’s only, like, lunch.”

“Oh, good, I’m starving.”

Hunk smiled, but it faltered quickly. He nodded at Lance’s bare feet.

Lance shrugged. “I felt like a change.”

Hunk hummed instead of falling down the spirally hole of their well-practiced, bantery nonsense (a special childhood friends gift, passed awkwardly between them whenever possible). They were quiet together long enough for it to become uncomfortable, and for Lance’s thoughts to drift towards distraction again, and then Hunk asked: “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Lance said. His fingers twitched. Hunk waited, unnaturally still. Like he was holding his breath. “Do you think Shiro and Allura will really keep Keith away from me?”

“Uh,” Hunk said. “I think we’ll all help with that—“ He shivered. “—I have  _ never _ seen such a, like, clingy Keith before. It’s disturbing.”

Lance had seen clingy Keith before. Lance, these days, thrived on clingy Keith and his smiles.

“Yeah,” he said, pathetic and tired.

Hunk eyed him. “You must be pretty freaked out.”

Lance always liked the way Hunk sounded out his p’s, enunciated his words to make a point: there was something soothing and familiar about it, like a childhood song. Now, it rankled something in his gut so his intestines seem to fold over each other, fighting for space and dominance and a little piece of peace.

He didn’t like the knowing shift of Hunk’s eyes, of his mouth. He didn’t like that familiar, slow tone of his voice as he enunciated his syllables to give Lance time to think of an answer. He didn’t like this knowing that wasn’t knowing, and he didn’t like the burden of truth that weighed on him, silent and unshareable.

Rules that  _ he _ had made and lines that  _ he _ had drawn.

He looked away.

“I’m doing okay,” he said.

Hunk seemed to consider this for a moment. “Keith’s still Keith,” he said.

Lance blinked at him. “I know?”

“I mean,” Hunk started again. “He’s still Keith. He isn’t—well, he’s not going to be weird forever.”

And there it was again: the spiked ball of guilt, curling and coiling and tumbling about. If Lance closed his eyes, he might be able to take himself back to the morning, to that foggy moment of Keith’s leaving and his whispering voice and the warmth he left behind in the cramped little bed.

Lance blinked again. He nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

A breath.

“But it’s still weird,” Hunk said.

Lance’s lips twitched. “But it’s still weird,” he agreed. He knew, then, that no rationalization in the whole of the wild, unknowable universe would be able to scare away that slimy feeling that came with lying to his oldest, closest friend.

Maybe they weren’t close, anymore. But maybe that had been true for a while. You share a cosmic robot brain with someone, so you start building walls and drawing boundaries. You look for the gaps where you don’t know each other and you pry them open until they’re canyons.

“Well,” Hunk said, his voice and his shrug seeming to come from far away. “He’s still Keith.”

“So you say.”

“I  _ mean _ , he’ll still listen when you tell him ‘no.’ He’s not going to do anything—bad to you.”

“No,” Lance agreed. He peeled his toes from the cool floor. “I’m not worried.”

“You seem worried.”

Lance felt how crooked his smile became. “I’m a little worried. Space war and all.”

“Space war,” Hunk sighed. “Space food. Space travel.”

Lance spread his hands. “Space.”

Hunk smiled at him. “Lunch?”

“Bit early.”

“I’m a bit hungry.”

“Me too,” Lance huffed. “Keith stole my coffee.”

“Coffee’s not breakfast.”

“It was going to be a  _ part _ of breakfast, and then everything went topsy turvy.”

“ _ Keith _ went topsy turvy.”

Lance snorted. “He’s the only who seems, you know, okay.”

Hunk nodded. “It’s a little disturbing.”

Yeah, Lance thought. It sounded half-hearted and disingenuous even as a thought.

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Let me grab my shoes.”

“Yeah, by the way—what’s up with that?”

Lance shrugged. The soles of his feet squeaked against the floor as he pivoted away, hands raised helplessly. “Sometimes we need a break, Hunk.”

Hunk blinked, like a headache had suddenly come on and had momentarily blinded him. “From  _ shoes _ ?”

***

“Did you really drag me out of my  _ sick bed _ to stand in the desert in the middle of the night?” Lance shivered. He tugged at the hem of his shirt. He scowled at the starry sky and the chilly air and the thin fabric of the slip-on shoes the Garrison had given them all. He scuffed his feet and tilted his nose away from the puff of dusty, dry sand that came up. 

“Yes, Lance,” Keith replied, slamming the rover’s door with a snap of his wrist and a disgruntled toss of his hair. It got longer every day. Lance thought it was mesmerizing. Enchanting. “I thought we’d go stargazing with the lizards and the sand.”

Lance glanced at him. He ceased his tugging. Twisted at the waist in an attempt to see and feel taller. “Really?” he said eventually, suspicious and hopeful at once.

Keith opened his mouth. Closed it. And then: “No,” he said. “I just—listened to the weather report.”

“Clear skies?” Lance scoffed.

“Mostly clear skies,” Keith said, and there was that smile again. The little, slightly alien one that had greeted Lance when Keith had woken him.

_ Lance _ , Keith had whispered. His hand had left a hot mark against Lance’s shoulder.

Keith, Lance thought now.

It was cold. It was still. He looked unwell, standing just steps away from Lance with the stolen rover looming behind him and the Garrison orange making him seem younger and older. Maybe this was part of who Keith was, now: some collapsing of time and space and Lance’s memories of him, the memories of him that made Lance hate him and miss him.

“What?” Keith said.

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

Keith’s smile fell away. His eyebrows furrowed. His hair was wild and unwashed. Lance, himself, felt shaded and unkempt. If he saw himself in the mirror he’d groan at his skin and he’d pick at the stubble that chose now, of all times, to show up. He must look like a boy playing at manhood. He must look as exhausted and dirty as Keith.

But Keith was also handsome and himself, carrying that energy that was so quintessentially him: wild and muted; decaying and just flaring into life. He was squarer these days—broader. Lance sometimes thought about (dreamt about) pressing his hands to Keith’s shoulders. He sometimes thought he could catch the time Keith had lost (they had lost) and cradle it in his hands until Keith was ready to take it back.

“Lance,” Keith said.

“Did you think about me?” Lance heard himself say.

And Keith said: “All the time.”

Like he knew.

And it started to rain.

The sky split open and cold, harsh rain pelted the ground and made Keith suck in a sharp gasp and immediately turned him from handsome, damaged warrior to upset puppy.

And Lance—

Well, he grew wings.

“It’s raining,” he yelled. Laughed.

“It’s not going to last,” Keith hollered back, his voice rising an octave and his shoulders crowding around his ears. He pushed his sopping hair from his eyes. “Just enjoy it!”

Lance threw back his head and roared, more than laughed, more than spoke. “I am,” he tried to say, but nothing came out but pleasure and noise and light. 

Desert rain, like a fairy tale.

And when he came back to earth, came back to the rain on the ground and away from the clouds in the sky, he saw Keith smiling again, and he saw Keith’s eyes huge and sheepish.

“Keith,” he said, but the rain swallowed his voice.

***

Keith appeared with Shiro in tow and, like nothing had happened at all, it was the seven of them in the kitchen again. At least, once Coran bounded in after Shiro and Keith, looking to all the universe like he had cracked the universal code to unlimited cotton candy.

Lance paused.

He decided he needed to introduce Coran to cotton candy.

Pidge was sitting cross legged on the counter, her shoes abandoned and her foot stink wafting directly to Lance’s nose.

(“Oh shut up,” Pidge had said. “I’m not the one getting space athlete’s foot.”

“You told her about my barefoot escapades!”

“Don’t call them that,” Hunk had sighed.

Normalcy.)

Allura spun around on her stool to face the door, watching with folded arms for any sign of—bad stuff, Lance supposed. More professions of love and future marriage from Keith. Hunk, on Lance’s other side, tugged at his sleeves nervously.

He thought about Pidge’s toes to fight the blush that wanted to rise on his cheeks.

“Band-aid,” Shiro said, like he had said several times already. He waved the tiny package at Keith’s head.

Keith ignored him. He scanned the room, blinking slowly. His eyes left Lance and then came back.

And he—perked up.

Just.

Perked up.

Bright eyes and straight back and a little smile—perked up.

“No,” Allura said, hopping to her feet.

Keith paused, mid-step. “Excuse me?”

Shiro, behind him, clearly resisted eating the band-aid.

“I said,” Allura huffed. “No. You should stay over there.”

“He hasn’t done anything,” Pidge said, sounding vaguely disappointed.

“I’m not going to do anything,” Keith grumbled.

Lance glanced at the ceiling. He bounced his knee. What to say, he wondered.

_ He’s faking _ , he could yell. Spread his arms and wave his hands for emphasis.

He leaned back against the counter instead. Pidge let out a long sigh against his head.

“I mean it, Keith,” Allura continued. “You are  _ not _ yourself.”

“I feel fine!”

“So you’ve said.”

“He was pretty normal in the lab,” Shiro admitted, and then grimaced. “Except for the, uh, Lance stuff.”

“The Lance stuff,” Pidge echoed.

“Fascinating stuff, really,” Coran crooned.

“I think I’m pretty interesting,” Lance piped up. Hunk laughed. The others—ignored him.

Coran clapped a hand to Shiro’s shoulder. “We observed some very interesting Keith behaviours! That is, ha ha!, very  _ un _ -Keith-like behaviours. For example, Keith is suddenly prone to romantic outbursts!”

“We know,” Pidge and Hunk said.

“Coran,” Allura said. “Please.”

“Keith actually is something of a hopeless romantic,” Shiro said. 

Lance wiggled his toes in his boots. He chewed at his lip.

Keith, across the kitchen, was ping-ponging his attention between Shiro and Coran, his shoulders near his ears. The thing that passed for his left sleeve was shoved up and over his shoulder.

He had lovely freckles on his shoulders. If they were even freckles. More like gifts from the universe for Lance to discover in the dim, twilight-esque light of his room, surprises for Keith to go “I have  _ what _ ” at.

Simpler times.

“Did they give him a shot?” Lance muttered to Hunk.

“Probably,” Hunk said, a little pathetically.

They looked at each other.

“You ask,” Lance said.

“No,” Hunk replied. “You do it.”

“Uh,” Pidge said, poking at Lance’s shoulder. “Lance shouldn’t talk to Keith.”

“Really?” Hunk said.

“Why’d you poke me?” Lance grumbled. His friends carried on, ignoring him.

“Yeah, really. That’s just asking for trouble.”

“What? They’re really going to go the whole week without talking to each other?”

“Well,” Pidge amended slowly. And then: “Yeah. It’s for the best.”

Ugh, Lance thought.

“Someone ask him,” he snapped.

Pidge and Hunk considered him, and then each other, and neither said a word.

“God,” Lance said, and then called across the little kitchen on the space plains: “Shiro!”

Which, reasonably, meant everyone looked at him.

“Uh,” he said, finding eloquent footing. “Well. Did you, you know, give Keith a shot?”

“Yes,” Keith said, gesturing in one ragged movement at his left arm. “It burned.”

He sounded so disgruntled. It was almost soothing.

“Uh,” Shiro said, in perfect imitation of Lance. “I didn’t give it to him.”

“Clearly.” Keith tugged his itty bitty sleeve back down. It accordioned back up. 

Coran sniffed and abandoned Shiro to wander towards the counter and one of the empty seats. “Dr. Wilson thought it best to inoculate Keith against—” He broke off and seemed to think about it, and then waved a hand and dropped into the seat on Hunk’s other side. “Anything, really! Who knows what nastiness you humans might get from legendary bugs.”

“Is the bug legendary?” Hunk mused. “Or is it the legend, you know, legendary?”

“The bite,” Pidge corrected and poked Lance—why!—again. “The bite is legendary.”

“But is the  _ bite _ legendary or is the  _ legend _ legendary? Like, is the legend a legend because of the bite, or is the bite a legend because of the legend?”

“Both, duh.”

“There’s nothing ‘duh’ about it!”

“I insist,” Coran cut in seriously. “It’s the bug. The bug, itself, is legendary.”

“Nah,” Hunk and Pidge replied together.

“In any case,” Allura said, her voice ringing and frustrated. “Keith is afflicted with a legendary curse and  _ as such _ —” She gestured, once and sharply, at Keith, who snapped his mouth shut and glowered. “—we need to—take—necessary precautions.”

“Necessary precautions,” Keith echoed.

Allura, steady as she goes, nodded his way. “Necessary precautions.”

There was a pause, just long enough for a breath. Lance could almost see the quivering, metaphysical line of tension between Allura and Keith, which seemed strangely absent from his own, half-real presence in the kitchen.

“Christ,” Keith said.

“Indeed,” Allura replied.

“See now that, there,” Pidge said. “That’s Black Paladin material.”

Keith flipped her the bird.

“Nice, Keith.”

“I’m serious,” Allura said, bringing them all round to something tangentially related to sanity. As she did. “Keith, you are not yourself, you cannot trust yourself, and we cannot trust you around Lance.”

“Are you listening to me?” Keith snapped. “I’m  _ fine _ !”

“The very problem is that we have all heard you,” Allura snapped back. “And we have all heard the nonsense that has left your mouth!”

“Oh no,” Shiro said, unpeeling the band aid delicately. “Coran and I had to endure more than you will ever know.”

“What?” Lance said.

Shiro stuck the band aid to Keith’s forehead. It dangled, ridiculous and pale, against his nose. “Don’t ask, Lance.”

“You make me sound like a villain,” Keith sputtered, swatting Shiro’s hands away and snatching the band aid from his face. He threw it to the ground.

They all watched it flutter slowly down.

“You’re not a villain,” Allura sighed, straightening. She rested her hands on her hips. “You’re ill, Keith.”

“I said I’m  _ fine _ !”

“Of course you are,” Allura said.

Keith recoiled.

It was the wide-eyed look of something panicked and uncertain on Keith’s that finally set something loose in Lance, something slow and fluttery and flat like the abandoned band aid. Pathetic.

Hilarious, even.

He pushed himself away from the counter and held out his hands in his best placating gesture. “Okay, okay,” he said, as though the room hadn’t dissolved into another stretch of silence. “How about we ask the  _ other _ affected person in the room what they think, yes?”

“Affected,” Coran piped up. “But not afflicted.”

“And thanking every god in the universe for it,” Lance said.

“Oh god,” Pidge said. “Yeah. Lovesick Lance is the only thing that could make this worse.”

Keith’s pitiful, hilarious, anxiety-inducing expression twisted some more.

“Here’s my thought,” Lance said with a shrug. “We just wait ‘til tomorrow. Maybe Keith’ll wake up and be totally fine.”

“I  _ am _ totally fine,” Keith said.

“Sure you are, buddy,” Hunk said. “You’re great.”

“I’m serious,” Lance continued. “I think everything will be okay in the morning.”

“Not according to legend,” Coran said, tugging once at his mustache. “Admittedly, he seems otherwise healthy. Unaffected, even.”

“His brain is melting,” Pidge said flatly.

Coran glanced at her. “Well,” he started.

“It’s not,” Keith said. Yelled.

“How would you know?” Pidge scoffed.

“It’s  _ my _ brain.”

“My point is!” Lance said, stretching to speak over them. “My point! Is. Tomorrow. Let’s just chill and tomorrow everything will be fine and we can all mock Keith endlessly.”

“Forever and ever,” Hunk agreed wistfully.

“All we have to go on  _ is _ a legend, I suppose,” Allura allowed, her shoulders slumping slightly. “That’s hardly scientific.”

“The length of the curse might very well have been exaggerated,” Coran agreed, reluctance making his voice stiff.

“Maybe I’m not cursed at all,” Keith said.

Shiro put a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be alright.”

Keith, disgusted, said nothing and slipped into another sagging glower of an expression. He folded his arms.

And Lance, buoyed, smiled.

“Alright,” he said. He clapped his hands together. “The plan is: wait and chill! Like all good marinades, Keith’ll be perfect after he’s rested for a night!”

“What?” Hunk said.

“What?” Allura said.

“What?” Shiro said.

“Great,” Pidge agreed, cheerful and bright.

***

The rain was cold and hard and soaked Keith to the bone in seconds, melting his hair against his forehead and weaving shock into his features. Lance watched him push the hair from his eyes, and then watched the slow curl of his lips, and watched the hunch of his shoulders and the flash of his teeth, and he thought that the abyss was not so deep, nor so dark, nor so huge a distance to leap.

“Keith,” he said, but the rain swallowed his voice.

Run, he thought. Fly, he thought. Feel the rain like falling through stars, like waiting and chasing and—

“Keith,” he said, and the rain swallowed his voice and echoed his thoughts until all he could hear was  _ Keith _ , and again  _ Keith _ , and again—

“Lance?” 

Keith.

Keith’s chest under his hands. Keith’s back thundering against the side of the rover. The dust of the sand and the harshness of the rain. The heat of their breath dancing, ragged with matched surprise and something very close to wonder.

“I want to kiss you,” Lance said, tasting his own surprise on his tongue. “Can I—”

“I wish you would,” Keith replied, his cheeks red and his eyes bright. 

Lance seized hold of the front of his shirt, hauling Keith to him. They crashed together, a clumsy mashing of mouths more than a proper kiss, but Keith gasped: with his voice, with his breath, with a sudden rising tension in his body that Lance felt all along his spine. Keith’s arms were tight around him, crushing Lance so close they became an unsteady blob of a creature, falling back against the rover. They found their rhythm quickly, trembling in the rain and feet slipping, and Lance felt fire and flight spread out from his spine and blossom in warm, dizzying spots all over his skin and his vision.

He had the thought, caught between Keith and the sky, that Keith would never let him go. 

Keith was right: the rain didn’t last. They came up for air and the stars were peeking through the wispy remnants of the clouds.

They leaned back just enough to look at each other, Lance’s arms still stuck between them and the tips of his fingers brushing at Keith’s collarbones.

“I’m in love with you,” Keith said. Blurted. He was almost too loud and made Lance’s ears ring with his voice. He shivered and his arms tightened and Lance sagged a little further into him. “Lance—I love you.”

Lance wanted to be charming. Sweet. He wanted to say something to spark a laugh out of Keith, to break the anxious grimace from his face so it would fall in soft flakes around their feet, forgotten. But his heart was loud in his chest, beating away at his ribs as if afraid he’d forget about it.

He pressed their foreheads together. Water dripped from their hair, falling on each other’s cheeks and chins.

“I love you too,” he mumbled.

Mumbled, whispered, breathed into quiet existence between them—even though he wanted to shout it to the sky, shout it to the earth, roar it into being in Keith’s chest so they’d both burst with the noise of it. But instead it was this: quiet. You’d have to be waiting for it to hear it, to see it. You’d have to know what to look for, what to listen for.

_ I love you _ .

Keith’s eyes squeezed shut. Lance counted the lines around his eyes, at his eyelids. He counted his own breaths, and then Keith’s, and then—

“Keith,” he tried.

“You don’t even know me,” Keith groaned. Lance felt Keith’s fingers drag at the small of his back, hot and insistent through his shirt. “Not anymore. I’m—”

“I know you,” Lance cut in, sharp and quick. Keith’s eyes snapped open. They stared at each other, too close to really see. “I  _ know _ you.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Lance scoffed. “ _ Oh _ .”

And Keith smiled.

***

Lance was pleased. Sated. Relaxed. Hopeful, even. But this lasted for all of—eh, five minutes. Ten minutes.

And then reality set in.

“Chill” or not, all eyes were on Keith: Keith’s behaviour, Keith’s smiles, every step Keith tried to make towards Lance or might  _ try _ to make towards Lance. By the time they had finished maneuvering their way through an afternoon of meetings and plannings and trying and failing to pay attention to diplomatic stuff, Keith looked ready to pull his hair out.

And Lance kind of got that.

The day was exhausting. Shiro kept checking Keith’s temperature. Keith kept trying to scratch at where he’d gotten his shot of—everything, apparently. Coran took copious notes and Pidge read them over until she looked kind of green. Routine—normalcy, or whatever passed for normalcy in space—had gone way out the window. 

And routine had been the cornerstone of Lance’s mental health aboard the Atlas. Mornings: harass Shiro until he smiles; afternoons: nod understandingly when Allura has something she needs to rant about it; evenings: goof off with Pidge and Hunk, until it was time to finally crawl into bed with Keith and kiss all his ribs. 

Everything was off-kilter. Frustrating. Headache-inducing. Lance could already see that he wasn’t going to sleep well tonight, he wasn’t going to get his much-needed snuggles, he wasn’t going to be able to convince Keith to let him brush his freaking hair _please_ _Keith just for a bit_ —

Well after bedtime, Keith snuck into Lance’s room and Lance had half a mind to throw him out.

“Shiro won’t leave me alone,” Keith said, pressing his back to the closed door. Lance, turned away and curled up on his bed, imagined he could hear Keith unclench his jaw. “ _ None _ of them will.”

He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow, scowling. “They’re afraid you’re going to molest me.”

“Not funny.”

”I’m very molestable.”

“ _ Very _ not funny.”

“Yeah,” Lance allowed. He lifted his free hand and waved, vaguely, at—everything. “Sorry. That was inappropriate. Kind of like this whole shit show.”

Keith, deliberately, looked at the ceiling. He drummed his fingers against the door. He was quiet, blinking slowly through his disapproval.

“Fine,” Lance said with a grimace. “That was bad. I know. I didn’t mean it. I take it back. It wasn’t funny. I’m stressed and I made a really bad non-joke. But—seriously, Keith.  _ Fix this _ .”

Keith sighed and pushed himself from the door, crossing the room to the edge of the bed in two steps. “Just wait,” he said eventually, thoughtful and slow. “I think this will work.”

Lance dropped slumped back against the bed with a groan. “Keith,” he said.

“Lance,” Keith replied easily and dropped next to him, crossed one leg under him. “I’m serious. I think this will work.”

Deliberately, Lance turned his scowl Keith’s direction. “That  _ what _ will work?”

Keith pressed his lips together. He looked comically pale for a moment, like a pinky finger with a tuft of hair glued onto the end, and then he said: “Let’s call it a test run.”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m serious. You said the others wouldn’t understand, yeah? Well, here’s our chance to  _ make _ them understand.”

Lance stared. He barked a stunted laugh. “No. This is crazy.”

“It’s not.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s totally-fucking-sane to make everyone to think you’re  _ cursed _ . How long do you want to spend being poked and prodded?” Lance paused and huffed a breath out through his nose. “Coran thinks he’s gonna write a book about you.”

”He might’ve already started,” Keith allowed in a mutter, and then shook himself. He leaned over Lance and poked him once, gentle and quick, in the shoulder. “It’s a good idea, Lance.”

“The book?”

“The curse.”

“No.” Lance shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Not a chance Keith. This is insane.”

“Just, listen,” Keith said. He poked Lance again and then settled his hand, warm and heavy, on Lance’s shoulder. “This is the perfect compromise.”

Lance laughed again.

Keith ignored him. “We spend the week with me being... _ me _ . With you. In front of everyone. Lots of affection and stuff.”

Lance wanted to eat his own hands.

“And eventually everyone gets used to it,” Keith said. His hand slipped from Lance’s shoulder and he stood, looking restful and thoughtful, like he wanted to launch into pacing but held himself back. “Which makes the transition to us being publicly together a little smoother. Or, everyone doesn’t get used to it, and in a week I’m magically un-cursed and we go back to how we were.”

“This is such a bad idea.”

“It’s  _ not _ .” 

“You’re not even the PDA type.”

“I could be,” Keith said softly. He held out his hands, something of a plea in his eyes. Lance eyed him, wary and unsure, maybe for the first time. “I like it,” Keith continued. “I like being able to kiss you. I like the look on Pidge’s face when I touch you.”

“Keith,” Lance sighed.

“I’m serious,” Keith insisted and lifted his hands a little higher. His fingers danced an invitation and Lance was tempted, just tempted, to take it. To take him, however he wanted them to be.

“I don’t like it,” Lance said. He hunched. “Not the—not the kissing and the touching and the lovey dovey stuff—that’s all—good and stuff—but the—the  _ lie _ , Keith.” He shivered.

Keith waited, arms still outstretched.

“I don’t know,” Lance said. He almost launched back into his pacing but held back. “I feel exposed, I guess. I feel—” He broke off.

A breath.

“Scared?” Keith offered.

“Yeah,” Lance groaned, throwing his head back and feeling the compression of his spine so he seemed and felt smaller. Keith, sitting on Lance’s bed, was unchanged and still. Just waiting.

He had learned to wait, in that hole in the universe, and somehow he was still impatient. Contradictions and kisses and stolen breaths, all wrapped up into one man.

“Okay,” Keith said. “I’ll stop.”

Lance sucked in a breath. He straightened. “Keith,” he said.

“I’ll stop,” Keith said again and held his hands out still higher, waiting and wanting and drawing Lance in and in. “I mean it. No games. No tricks. No curse. I don’t want you to be scared.”

Lance breathed slowly, in and out, for a moment, and then swung his legs off the bed and stood, slipping his hands into Keith’s waiting hold. Keith smiled easily, twisting their fingers together and tugging Lance just that half-step closer so their legs knocked and their breath mingled. Lance, suddenly and familiarly dizzy, looked down at Keith’s smile, and his scar, and the shape of his jaw and the edge of his eyebrows and the fall of his hair.

“Did you mean it?” he said.

And he meant the  _ I’m going to marry him one day _ bit, but Keith heard something else and said, again: “I don’t want you to be scared.”

His scar was so loud and bright. Lance knew, intimately, the trace of it along Keith’s shoulder and against his chest. He had pressed his lips to its jagged shape, had traced its brightness in the dark, had fallen asleep against it once, or twice, or a thousand times already.

“I’m always scared,” he said, sounding dumbfounded even to his own ears.

“Me too,” Keith said.

He was warm. Close.

“Just a week,” Lance muttered.

Keith blinked at him.

“Just—yeah. Just a week, okay? Just to see.”

“Yeah,” Keith said.

“It’s not right, though. It’s still just—they’ll just think you’re cursed and stuff and I—”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Keith cut in, serious and firm. “Either way, Lance.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

The admission came suddenly and fiercely from somewhere Lance barely recognized. It was his voice, and those were his words and that great, loud fear, but he couldn’t remember connecting his tongue to that fear and he couldn’t remember asking his mouth to let it spill between them.

Keith, unphased and unsurprised, shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll live a hundred secret lives with you.”

It wasn’t what Lance had meant. It wasn’t what he had been afraid to say and afraid to remember from his nightmares. But it was all he needed to say.

“I think one’ll do,” Lance laughed.

Keith shrugged. He squeezed Lance’s hands.

“Okay,” Lance said. “Okay. Let’s give your dumb experiment a try.”

“It’s just dumb enough to work,” Keith grumbled. He shook his head. “If you change your mind—”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “Yeah.”

“I’ll sneak out earlier tomorrow,” Keith said. He pulled his hands from Lance’s and wound his arms, warm and heavy, around Lance’s waist, so they were unsteady and heavy and ready to topple to the bed.

“Yeah,” Lance said again.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!!


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